The National to perform "Sorrow" for 6 straight hours

In celebration of this season’s last Sunday Sessions, MoMA PS1 presents the durational performance, A Lot of Sorrow, by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. For the original work Kjartansson sought out US rock band, The National, to perform their song, Sorrow, repeatedly in a six-hour live loop. By stretching a single pop song into a day-long tour de force the artist continues his explorations into the potential of repetitive performance to produce sculptural presence within sound.

Sorrow found me when I was young,
Sorrow waited, sorrow won

commences the song by The National, whose music and lyrics repeatedly conjure notions of romantic suffering and contemporary Weltschmerz—themes Kjartansson often uses in his own work employing references as wide-ranging as Ingmar Bergman, the German Romantics, and Elvis Presley. As in all of Kjartansson’s performances, the idea behind A Lot of Sorrow is devoid of irony, yet full of humor and emotion. It is another quest to find the comic in the tragic and vice versa.

"Actually as the hours went on I think we all realized that this experience was something special for us -- there was a weird hypnotic resonance and spirituality to repeating the song over and over. We almost didn't want to stop and we learned something about our capacity for endurance and the song opened up in surprising ways... By the end it didn't feel like we were playing it anymore. We know the idea seemed pretentious in some way, but [artist] Ragnar [Kjartansson] has this mix of humor and sadness that feels quite similar to what our songs are about... We're very glad to have done it."

So this is getting released as a vinyl box set. I think I've finally found the limit to how much of a completist I am when it comes to this band. If this had been 10 days ago I would have thought it was an April Fools joke.

I love the National and have everything they've released on vinyl so far but I'll be passing on this. They could have put out so many better live shows, unreleased stuff, their movie soundtrack songs heck even their Bob's Burgers songs and I'd have bought them as would many others I'm sure. But 6 hours of them playing one song I'm not even a huge fan of in it's album form? No thanks guys. I wish them well with raising money for charity but this release is nonsense.
People are gonna buy this and it will sit on their shelf. Can't imagine getting home after a hard days work, getting a cold beer and flicking through LPs and deciding "hmmm think I'll listen to disc 7 of Sorrow tonight!".
Each to their own though.